The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst Read online

  We would all have to sign a petition, the twins were insisting, demanding that Zoe join our dorm.

  ‘If we’re going to petition for Zoe to join, we should petition for Hsiang and Georgia too,’ I pointed out.

  The twins, who were placing their silk dresses onto hangers in one of the wardrobes, both turned around and burst out laughing. ‘Why would we do that? Hsiang and Georgia aren’t our friends.’

  Now, there are two wardrobes in each dorm and each is split up into three sections. One section per girl. But as the twins laughed alongside the open wardrobe door, it became clear to the rest of us that they’d been using all three segments of that wardrobe.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ Katya said. ‘You’re accidentally using the whole thing.’

  ‘Not an accident,’ Hetty said, suddenly serious.

  ‘We always use three sections,’ Tatty explained.

  ‘You see, Mother says that twins need more than double what a single child needs.’

  ‘That’s the loopiest thing I ever heard,’ Katya scoffed. (Sometimes I like it when Katya scoffs.)

  ‘We always do this,’ Hetty said soothingly, as if to settle a group of fretful toddlers. She continued hanging dresses in the third segment.

  ‘Yes, every year,’ Tatty agreed. ‘Nobody’s ever had a problem with it before. Usually Zoe just keeps her clothes in her suitcase, but that’s because she’s a true friend.’

  Hetty sighed. ‘Which is why it’s so unfair that we’re without Zoe. Imagine if we also had to give up our wardrobe space? Two of you will have to share. Perhaps Dot Pecorino could share with the new girl? What’s the new girl’s name?’

  ‘Autumn Hillside,’ said a voice.

  And there she was, standing in the doorway: the new girl.

  I’d missed my chance to pounce.

  I mean, I still could have pounced, but everyone was staring and it would have looked obvious.

  Autumn Hillside was slender, tall, and had beautiful hair. Dark as night it was, and hanging loose and free like laundry on the line, all the way to her waist. Her eyes were like crescent moons. (I don’t mean they were up in the sky, I just mean her eyes were shaped like fine curves.)

  These eyes were gazing around the dormitory, from the polished oak floorboards to the rugs to the bookcase to the corkboard where we pin up sketches and photographs.

  She seemed very calm, standing there gazing at the furniture while five girls stared.

  ‘Where are our manners?’ Hetty cried suddenly, scuttling forward and shaking the new girl’s hand. ‘Welcome! Autumn, did you say? What a fascinating name! My name is Hetty, and this is my twin, Tatty. Rather less exotic, I’m afraid. Come in, Autumn! Do you see that bed there? It’s yours!’

  ‘Have a bounce on it,’ Tatty recommended. ‘They’re lovely and bouncy.’

  So. It seems the twins had pounced. I’d been a fool to worry about looking obvious.

  But Autumn, after shaking the twins’ hands politely, remained standing in the doorway gazing around. She smiled at me.

  She smiled at me! I was very happy.

  At last she stepped into the room.

  ‘I keep hearing about an Ogre teacher,’ she said. ‘The word Ogre seems to be floating down corridors.’

  ‘Like a cat brushing up against your legs,’ I suggested.

  ‘Like what?’ scoffed Katya.

  Dot Pecorino gave me a baffled look.

  ‘Don’t worry about her,’ Tatty Rattlestone said. ‘That’s just Esther. She’s a bit strange. When everyone else runs inside to avoid a thunderstorm, Esther runs outside.’

  ‘Without even an umbrella,’ Hetty added. ‘She does it all the time.’

  But Autumn was nodding at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s exactly like a cat.’

  The twins frowned briefly, then seemed to decide Autumn was joking and punched her arm in a friendly way.

  ‘The thing is,’ Tatty explained, ‘we think our teacher this year is an Ogre.’

  ‘Because she comes from Horseshoe Island,’ Hetty put in. ‘And only Ogres live there.’

  The new girl looked towards a window. ‘Anyone want to help me tie some sheets together so we can escape?’

  Everybody laughed.

  Oh, I loved her.

  Autumn Hillside.

  So funny and sensible.

  I would make friends with her. Hsiang, Georgia, Autumn and I would become a gang of four. What would our gang do? Maybe tour the Kingdoms and Empires playing music? (Georgia is musically gifted, and I’m sure I could learn an instrument if I put my mind to it.) Or playing sports? (Hsiang is an excellent cricketer, and I can—well, I can keep score okay when I concentrate.)

  Better: have adventures! I’ve always wanted one of those—an adventure.

  Anyway, plenty of time to decide. I tuned back into the conversation.

  ‘I mean, an Ogre is a Shadow Mage,’ Hetty was saying. ‘It should be illegal for a school to employ a Shadow Mage!’

  I shook my head. ‘Ogres are not Shadow Mages,’ I said. ‘They’re not magical, they’re just huge and bad-tempered. And they have—’

  ‘Esther is obsessed with magic,’ Tatty interrupted, shaking her head as if I was a tiresome child with a stamp collection. ‘It’s magic, magic, magic, with her, Autumn. And she wants to be a Spellbinder so badly she spends most of her time hoping her toenails will turn blue!’

  ‘You do?’ Autumn asked me, interested.

  ‘Not most of my time,’ I said, annoyed. Although, actually, it was a lot of the time. ‘But listen, the reason people get confused about Ogres is that they have a long history of helping Shadow Mages. So they’ve picked up a few shadow powers.’

  Our new teacher, an Ogre, could have shadow powers.

  A thread of fear wound slowly through the room.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Tatty looped an arm through Autumn’s. ‘Our mother is sure to enlist the help of our … relatives.’

  She and Hetty looked around the room significantly, but nobody jumped in to inform Autumn that these were royal relatives. The twins sighed.

  ‘Let’s go now,’ Tatty said, ‘and see if Mother’s replied.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Hetty took Autumn’s other arm. ‘Let’s.’

  Katya and Dot followed, but I decided to stay. I wanted to check the other Grade 6 dorms for Georgia and Hsiang.

  The first dormitory I checked was empty. They must have finished unpacking already.

  The second had its own new girl.

  We almost never get new people so it was remarkable to have two in one grade. I could only catch glimpses of her from the doorway, because the others had crowded around her. She was sitting cross-legged on a bed, holding an open box of chocolates. Hands kept reaching into the box. She must have told them to help themselves.

  She had short, shaggy hair, very bright eyes and a nose like a snail shell.

  (I don’t mean her nose was brown and would crunch if you stepped on it. Or that it had a slug-like creature living in it. Just, her nose was a cute little round shape.)

  This new girl was talking and the others seemed transfixed.

  I decided I’d make friends with her too: a challenge, as she was already popular, what with the chocolates, the transfixing and the nose.

  Around then, I heard slow footsteps climbing the staircase. It was Hetty, Tatty, Katya and Dot, and I could tell by their mournful pace that they hadn’t had any luck.

  ‘Nothing from Mother yet,’ Hetty told me.

  Tatty began thudding her forehead against the corridor wall. The twins can be very dramatic.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud.

  ‘Where’s Autumn?’ I asked, remembering her suddenly. I’d have to be careful not to forget her when she became a best friend.

  ‘Oh, the garden or something,’ Hetty said, listlessly.

  ‘Wanted to explore on her own,’ Tatty added, irritably.

  Well, that was something. They’d lost control of Autumn.

  ‘What’s going on in
there?’ Katya asked, peering into the open doorway of the dorm.

  ‘Another new girl,’ I said.

  ‘Another one?!’ cried Hetty. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  Hetty and Tatty flew into the room to join the crowd.

  Hsiang and Georgia were not at Games-by-the-Pond that afternoon. Nor were they at the Welcome-Back-Banquet that night.

  We have to sit with our grades for meals, so I didn’t see my sisters again until the recreation room that night.

  Monday evenings, we practise poker. There’s a small table by the window where we play.

  As she dealt the cards, Imogen said: ‘Looks like you’ve got an Ogre for your teacher, Esther!’

  ‘Yes!’ Astrid exclaimed.

  They both beamed.

  Beamed.

  Not worried. Not sorry for me. But beaming.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ Imogen declared. ‘If this Mrs Pollock is mean to you, just come find me and I’ll take care of her.’

  She’s such a confident person, Imogen, you sometimes forget that she’s a thirteen-year-old girl and would not be able to ‘take care of’ an Ogre. It’s true that she has reached level 16 in kickboxing classes, which is three levels higher than her kickboxing master himself. (Mother taught us all the basics of kickboxing and only Imogen decided to enrol in summer classes.) But Imogen is not the size of a small mountain. She’s not an undercover assassin.

  ‘An Ogre!’ Astrid repeated, eyes shining like polished silver. ‘I mean, you already write brilliant stories, Esther, and you’ll have great new subject matter.’

  ‘You’ll be able to write a book,’ Imogen agreed, ‘called My Teacher, the Ogre.’

  I fanned out my cards, thinking that, whatever Mrs Pollock-the-Ogre was like, Georgia, Hsiang and I would face her together. Then I flicked a card with my fingernail and remembered that Georgia and Hsiang were still not back.

  ‘They must both be having an extra-long holiday somewhere,’ Imogen suggested.

  ‘Have you opened their letters yet?’ Astrid asked. ‘They probably explain their lateness in their letters.’

  Which is why, that night, when we were all in bed and reading by lamplight, I opened Hsiang and Georgia’s letters.

  Now, you might have already guessed this. I don’t know why I didn’t. The two new girls should have been a clue.

  Actually, I think that in a way I did guess, I just didn’t want to believe it. Uneasiness had been swarming around my shoulders all day, but I’d put that down to news of the Ogre.

  I won’t tell you everything my friends’ letters said, just the important part.

  Here it is.

  They’d left the school.

  Georgia’s letters said she’d transferred to a music conservatorium, to focus on her flute. (Playing it, I mean. Not sitting and staring at it.)

  Hsiang’s letters announced she was going to a sports academy, where she’d won a cricket scholarship.

  They both said they were very sorry to be leaving, and that they would miss me.

  I felt as if I’d pulled out a drawer, really wrenched it, in a rush to find socks, say, and it had toppled all the way out and crashed to the floor, hitting my toes. There should be a little hinge or catch to prevent that happening, shouldn’t there?

  I think there usually is one in a chest of drawers, actually.

  But not in life.

  I had the dream for the first time that night.

  You don’t know what I mean when I say ‘the dream’, do you? That’s only because I haven’t told you yet. Don’t worry, I’m telling you now.

  It’s just a short dream.

  Father always wants to know about our dreams. ‘And then what?’ he says excitedly. ‘No! What are the chances? Okay, brilliant, and then what?’ As if it really happened. And he seems disappointed when the dream ends, or when you can’t explain what happened next. Dreams just fade into other, unrelated dreams sometimes, don’t they? It’s nobody’s fault.

  Father especially likes it when he himself features in the dream. He chuckles, very pleased about whatever ‘dream Father’ has said or done. ‘Did he now?’ he says. ‘Well, he sounds a clever chap.’

  Mother listens to our dreams in a distressed sort of way and then halfway through says, ‘Wait a minute, is this a dream? Oh, you funny thing, don’t go telling me dreams!’ And then she hurries off to put away the laundry.

  Anyhow, if you’re the sort of person who hurries away with the laundry when someone starts telling you a dream, don’t worry. This one, as I said, is very short.

  All that happens is this.

  I’m lying on my back on a rug, looking up at a cloudy sky. It begins to rain.

  That’s it.

  I’m lying on a rug. It starts to rain. I wake up.

  You are probably wondering why I’m even telling you about this dream.

  It’s because I dreamed it maybe 250 times in the last year.

  And because every time I woke from the dream, I felt as if an elephant was standing on my chest, splintering my bones.

  That first night, I screamed.

  Only, the elephant had crushed all the voice out of my voice box, so the scream was a tiny ee!—like the sound Elves make when they’re annoyed.

  ‘Ee!’ I said, and I leapt up in bed, clutching at the sheets. As if the sheets were going to be any help. (They weren’t.)

  I felt like a person with wild eyes and dishevelled hair.

  I looked around for Imogen or Astrid, but of course my sisters weren’t there, and I looked for Georgia or Hsiang, and of course they weren’t there.

  The other girls were dark shadows sleeping.

  I needed to wake somebody. But who? Quickly, I ran through the options.

  The Rattlestone twins—waking them would be like waking a pair of silky kittens. They’d sulk, purr at each other, admire themselves in the mirror and go back to sleep.

  Autumn Hillside—still a stranger. I felt too shy to wake her.

  Dot Pecorino—so tiny and quiet I hardly knew who she was. Which made her a stranger, too.

  Katya—ha, imagine how loudly she’d scoff if I woke her and said: ‘Katya, I just dreamed that it rained.’

  In the end, I didn’t wake anybody.

  I got out of bed and staggered to the door.

  That embarrassed me, the staggering. I knew I was all right, really, and that it was just a dream, and not even a scary one. Even if you disliked rain, you still wouldn’t call that a nightmare. And here’s the strange thing: I love rain!

  I crept out into the corridor.

  There is always one lamp burning in case you need to go to the bathroom, but I walked in the opposite direction. A long, narrow window overlooks the gardens at the back of the building.

  Moonlight swayed mistily across the lawns. It shimmered in the pond and glanced against the windows of the Old Schoolhouse, a huge building at the back of the gardens. It was shut up years ago and has been empty ever since. There’s never anybody in it.

  Except for now.

  I blinked.

  A light had just flashed in one of the windows. Next, a shadow flitted.

  I pressed my forehead to the glass and peered more closely.

  There it went again—passing the next window. A pinprick of light, like a candle-flame, followed by a shadow.

  Flit. Flit (candle-flame). Whoosh (shadow).

  Ghosts.

  My heart lit up like fireworks.

  Maybe I had an Ogre for a teacher, and maybe my best friends had left the school, and maybe I’d just had a strange dream about rain—but there were ghosts in the Old Schoolhouse.

  I smiled and returned to bed, very happy.

  Except that there weren’t any ghosts in the Old Schoolhouse.

  I found this out the next morning.

  At breakfast, all of us Grade 6 girls were very solemn about our first day of classes with Mrs Pollock, the Ogre. Some people were full of gloomy predictions, saying things like, ‘If I don’t make it through
the day, please make sure the ceramic cow I got for my birthday goes to my brother. Not my sister. She broke my locket.’

  Others tried to be positive. Autumn Hillside said, ‘Maybe she won’t be so bad?’

  The twins, seated either side of her, studied her.

  ‘Yes,’ Hetty said. ‘Good attitude.’

  ‘I mean,’ Tatty added. ‘She’s not a Shadow Mage. She’s not a Whisperer.’

  Autumn Hillside stirred a cube of sugar into her tea and nodded. ‘Yes, she’s not a Whisperer.’

  Then Principal Hortense stood up and said: ‘Girls! I forgot to mention something important yesterday! You know the Old Schoolhouse out the back?’

  We all nodded. An excitable chill ran down my spine. She was going to tell us that it was haunted! And command us to stay away!

  I wouldn’t. I’d have adventures with ghosts.

  ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘it was refurbished over the summer and is now a convention centre. Please respect the privacy of the people staying there, and for goodness sake, do not go throwing balls through the windows! Apart from the expense of replacing the glass, you’ll give the people there a dreadful fright!’

  Ha ha ha, everyone laughed.

  ‘What’s a convention centre?’ I called, without even raising my hand. This is because I was annoyed that it wasn’t ghosts. Also I didn’t find her comment about throwing balls through windows funny. Nobody smashes a window on purpose. At least, the windows I’ve smashed in my time at Katherine Valley have all been complete accidents.

  As soon as Principal Hortense started explaining what a convention centre was, I lost interest. I remembered that I already knew—it’s just a place where grown-ups hold meetings.

  Principal Hortense was still going on, trying to define what a convention is, what a centre is, and you put them together and you get—I don’t know. I wasn’t listening. Suddenly, I had a thought.

  ‘Have the people already arrived?’ I called.

  Maybe the people weren’t due for another week? Maybe the lights I’d seen were ghosts? Disturbed by the refurbishment? And when the people arrived, they’d get a dreadful fright, not from a ball through the window, but from ghosts in the corridors.